The Indian Contractor visits Vietnam and China on a Shoestring

The very last disaster took place on the very last day at our supposedly last destination in China. This was the biggest and most expensive disaster of them all. It made the Thac Bac and Beijing disasters look like mole mounds. We reached Guangzhou at 1130 pm the previous night.

Guangzhou was one of those airports that did not run 24hrs. We were asked to leave the airport by 1230, after the last departure. We WAited to see if anyone would chase us out of the airport and settled down at the arrival hall of the airport. Many people settled down like us and dozed off. We followed suit. My buddy had some writng to do so I dozed off, waking up at regular intervals. We got up once and for all at 5 am and took some pictures outside the airport. Our check in time was 0830. So we bumed around for a while and walked slowly to the departure hall. We were stopped by a guy on a cart who asked us to show our tickets. We showed it and he asked us to sit on his cart. We sat down thinking it was some sort of a free shuttle service. He went about 20 meters and stopped at a counter asking us to pay 40RMB for the journey to the departure hall. We refused and walked on. These guys are crazy! We're young people, we dont need to be moved around (unless you're doing it for free ).

So we made it to the departure terminal. We went to the check in counter for Tiger Airways and produced our passport and tickets. The lady took a look at it and asked my companion, "where's your baby?".

We were taken aback for a moment. She was obviously looking at the wrong name. Then she took a look at the ticket and told us,"Sorry, but your ticket is for yesterday, todays flight is full. Try to get a ticket for tomorrow."

We were having a low fare airline ticket which meant there was no refund and no change to departure time! I was paralysed for a moment. My buddy started panicking too. We checked other flights for the day and only Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines were flying that day to Singapore. Both of us had to be back that day and we were left with two of the top airlines to choose from!

The Cathay Pacific ticket was about 450 USD per person. After giving it some thought we decided to take the cathay pacific flight which had a transfer at Hong Kong. So it would be Guangzhou - Hong Kong - Singapore. And one swipe of my debit card would deprive me off US$900. Ugh!

We cursed ourselves for not looking at the ticket earlier. In fact Gilberts dad had asked us atleast 3 times about our departure time and date for Guangzhou and we repeatedly gave him the wrong date, without looking at our ticket. Double Ugh!!

We took the flight to Hongkong and took some pictures of Hongkong from their new airport at Chek Lap Kok. I was bleeding internally from that last transaction. I learnt a very very expensive lesson. The pictures did not turn out too well either.